January
by Beloved-Stranger
Summary: Sam, Jack and somewhat fuzzy microfics. Itty bitty feelgood reads...which in recent days have conspired amongst themselves to form a plotline...kinda. Mild, cuddly S/J
1. Softfoot

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

AN: Look! My first mircofic!

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-Softfoot- 

Sometimes, when no ones looking, Sam turns up the radio in the kitchen and dances to The Beatles.

If she's having an especially good day, she'll let Jack catch her at it.

But the best moments are in summer, when a slow one comes on, and they'll dance together.


	2. One Day

**AN:**Look! Microfic number two!   


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**One Day**

One day, Malcolm Barrett put an envelope in Jack's hand as he exited the school's front gates. Details on stolen Asgard cloning tech, and a facility hidden somewhere in the industrial district. Bad guys never seemed to get sick of abandoned warehouses. They also never seemed to get sick of kidnapping a certain blonde genius. Rat-bastards.

Jack's break-in coincided with SG-1's retrieval of Colonel Carter, and yet they never noticed the teenager bearing only a backpack and pathetic .22 pistol stealing down the smoking halls. They never saw him break open that terrible, sinister pod and help the shaking girl inside step out into the world.

Two weeks fleeing across the globe, because there was no way they could be allowed to lay hands on this delicate girl, who's name was Sam, too, and who smiled sometimes like she was the world waking up all over again.

Here, on this golden day, on this golden beach with Sam and her golden hair, Jack pushes it all away, and teaches her how to body board in amongst the laughter and seawater.


	3. The Sixties

**The Sixties**

Documents had been waiting for them at the airport, and money still popped up occasionally in their new account, but it was safer to earn their own as much as possible.

So here they were, Jack as the junior chef-shape and Sam behind the bar at Beach Comber.

Who would ever come looking for them down here at the butt end of the globe? No one Jack could think of, and the Island was just as good a place as any. Maybe better even.

No one looked twice at two dropouts eking out a living at one of the local cafés, and they were free to be as odd as they liked. Freckle often said that this was one of the places the hippies all bunked off to when the sixties ended and disco took over.

Jack _liked_ the sixties…


	4. Difficulty

**Difficulty**

Jack found her in the chill of all places, wrapped in Freckle's ugly blue fleecy and doing a quite unnecessary stock take of the veggie and salad shelves. As he set the chill door to, just open enough to let others in the kitchen know someone was in, he noticed her hands shaking.

"Hey," he said softly. "How long've you been in here?"

Those big blue eyes looked up at him, and he knew the shaking wasn't from cold. She'd had another flashback. Just when things had been getting better…

"Sam?"

"I'm fine."

"You're not," he argued gently, taking the clipboard and pen from her. He set them on the shelf and put his arms around her as snugly as he could. "Sam, you can't keep doing this. When this happens you need to tell Freckle, go home – rest is the only thing we know that helps."

He felt her sigh and press her face to his shoulder.

"It's so hard," she whispered

And it had been.


	5. English Timing

**English Timing**

The chill door swung suddenly wide, and their boss, one Fredrika 'call-me-Freckle' Sails, stood blinking at both of them.

"Whatever are you doing?" she cried in surprise. "You can't be having _nookie_ in the _chill_! It's too cold – and unhygienic!"

'Well,' Sam thought, peering at the British Ex-pat as Jack sputtered out a reply, 'there's something to be said for English timing…'


	6. Shift Work

**Shift Work**

They weren't entirely free of it. Shift work could still come back to haunt them. There were still days when someone was too sick or hung-over to come in for the breakfast rush, and Jack would be stuck with six hours sleep, churning out what felt like a bazillion Eggs Benny's and French Toasts.

Sam would smile and blow kisses from behind the bar, and laugh at his grumpy faces.

There were nice bits though. After the shift ended at noon, Jack would go home and nap in between bouts of vacuuming and laundry, waiting for their landlady, Shan and her daughter Helen to get back from work and daycare respectively, and for Sam to knock off at Beach Comber.

She would stumble in at six and flop down on the bed beside him, one arm flung across his stomach, reeking deliciously of coffee and chocolate powder. Once, she and Lucy had a collision behind the bar on a busy summer's day, and both went home stinking of Chai syrup.

Jack had gloried in it, but they hadn't been familiar enough with each other back then, and he hadn't felt brave enough to turn his head and kiss the scent from her cheek.


	7. Homer

**Homer**

Sam was sitting with Helen, watching The Little Mermaid and braiding the three-year-old's hair when Jack very nearly exploded into the living room, wildly waving a newspaper and grinning madly.

"We have to take the ferry into town tomorrow!"

Sam blinked. "That's nice. Why?"

Wordlessly he shoved the paper at her. Circled in red marker was an advert in the wanted listings.

_**Wanted: Good home for good dog**  
Seven-year-old Beagle  
Even-tempered  
Obedience trained  
House-broken  
Good with children_

And finally the icing on the cake…

_Answers to 'Homer'._


	8. Technicolor Girl

**Technicolor Girl**

At first, he wasn't really used to seeing her in anything other than shapeless olive or blue, but now he can't imagine ever wanting to see her in anything other that full Technicolor.

Sam in green – deep, abiding peridot – is an untold glory. It pulls forth previously unseen qualities in her eyes, and makes her into some fey creature in an Art Nouveau masterpiece. Sometimes when she wears it in their overgrown garden, one can only see her when she moves.

Clad in that new yellow sundress, she is a vision of sunlight, the colour rising up and heightening the hue of her hair, so that her eyes are almost painfully bright, shining sky-blue out of all that ludicrous gold. It's a miracle she doesn't give him sunburn.

There's one particular shade of pink that softens her into something sleepy and warm. Her pajamas are that colour and he wakes up to her watching him with a drowsy flush in her cheeks, and thinks that it's the best shade to see first thing in the morning.

In red she is a sight to behold, sensual, turning the air hot around her in an aura that will bring him to his knees if he doesn't lock them. It's the colour of her one 'evening' dress, the one with the misleading neckline and dipped back. If – _when_ – she paints her mouth to match, he may die on the spot.

Purple does odd things to her. She seems far-away and shy in this colour. Secretive and feminine, somehow more thoroughly tied to the mysteriousness of her gender. It turns her eyes violet and fills them with magic – _big magic eyes_, like that Audrey Hepburn movie she likes. He wonders if in a previous life, she was a princess – and then wonders when he started believing in reincarnation.

But best of all will always be Sam in blue. Her eyes blaze like they always did back in the drab-and-shapeless-olive days, only brighter, better. She looks like a piece of sky given human form – endless legs and long-fingered hands and a mouth that could crush him with one smile. In denim shorts and an azure tank-top, she is the epitome of herself, elbow deep in the guts of Shan's disobedient car, grubby and laughing, lapis eyes burning glorious imprints onto his retinas.

Jack knows that he will never look away. The rainbow that is Sam will hypnotize him forever, and happily he will go.


	9. Karma

**AN: **Just to let you know, these drabbles arn't going to be posted in any real kind of chronological order, just as they occur to me.

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**Karma **

Shan came home to find her kitchen had been taken over.

By Jack.

Why were there so many things wrong with this picture?

"Sam," she called cautiously. "What's going on?"

Sam padded in from the living room with Hellie and Homer trailing at her heels. She eyed the kitchen with deep mistrust.

"Well, he's been crashing around in there for the past half hour…"

Shan didn't bother to mask her surprise. "Doing what?"

"Cooking dinner." Uncertain pause. "I think."

Contrary to popular opinion (and expectation) the kitchen did not at any point explode, and another half an hour later, Jack emerged triumphant with the most beautiful pasta bake ever to pass the lips of mankind.

Then he found himself saddled with dinner duty for the rest of his natural life.

Karma. That's all that could be said.


	10. Discombobulated

**AN:** Just a snippet. Its snippy.

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**Discombobulated**

Jack peeks through the waiter's window at the bar and grins.

Lucy's on shots today, and bitching all to high hell about how much the far right carrier's sticking.

Sam keeps flinching towards the cupboard under the bar where their little tool kit is…

She's got that look on her face, and Jack fights outright laughter.

One of these days, she's going to recalibrate the coffee machine.


	11. Teh Sex

**AN:** Quick and dorky, but hey, the best always are. Just so you know, Lucy works as a barista with Sam, and Tom and Con are chefs with Jack, all working at Beach Comber.

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**Teh Sex**

"Sam needs the sex."

Con spat his beer back into his glass.

"_Whut?"_

Lucy smiled her dreamy smile. "It's why we're here tonight, Con. We have to figure out how Sam is going to get Jack into the sack."

Sam, meanwhile, was attempting to hide behind her menu. Con pulled it down and stared at her in disbelief.

"You're not shagging him already?" he asked, awestruck and incredulous. "But you _live_ together; have done since you got here. And I thought you were sharing a _bed_…"

"I couldn't believe it either," Tom put in, idly swirling the remainder of his second pilsner in its glass. "I mean he's just that good-looking. And Jesus, the smile…"

Sam reflected upon the irony of Tom looking as though he should be playing collage football and Con looking as though he should be arranging flowers, and yet the former being the one shyly eyeing up muscular types with well developed biceps while the latter was a definite fan of the fairer sex and its many skirts.

Her life never failed to be interesting.

"But, what's the problem?" Con was saying.

Lucy muttered, "Prudes," into her appletini, and Tom shot her a sly smile.

Con flapped a hand. "He adores you, obviously."

At Sam's incredulous look, he rolled his eyes and continued. "Please, hon, we've all worked with the pair of you since day one, it was kinda hard to miss. Every second I turned around there he was peering through the waiter's window at you behind the bar."

Tom was nodding in sage agreement. "Nearly took his own fingers off with the bread knife a couple of times trying to keep an eye on you and cook at the same time."

"Holy shit," Sam breathed.

"Oh, he doesn't do it any more," Tom reassured. "But this is getting a little off topic. How are we s'pose to get him into your pants?" The last was directed at Sam, who promptly flushed again.

"We could make him jealous," suggested Con, with a friendly leer at Sam.

Lucy swatted his arm. "That won't work, he'll just punch you." She looked thoughtful. "I have an idea."

* * *

"Jack," Lucy said to Jack the next evening. "If you don't shag Sam, I will."

Jack nearly suffered a hernia, cardiac event and asphyxiation, but it did the job, because for the next week, both he and Sam wandered about with pleased, rather vacant expressions on their faces.

So much so that Jack started nearly taking his own fingers off with the bread knife again.


	12. Emerald City

**Emerald City**

In winter, in the months that still feel like they should be full of sunshine, she sits by the ranch slider and looks forlornly out at the driving rain. The blunt light filtering down from the angry sky picks out the hidden grey in her eyes and belies her fading summer tan.

Thinking back and missing the bikini, Jack is caught a little off guard by the soft and slightly maudlin questions.

"You don't miss it? Don't envy the other us?"

"Heck no! Sam, come on! I've got a beach, functioning knees, great friends, Saturday markets full of fabulous crap to buy…" He gives her that thrilling grin of his. "…and a hot blonde who makes excellent coffee and enjoys my cooking."

He sees the smile curling the corners of her mouth in a hopeful way, and so continues, pulling her close.

"I do miss people sometimes, and I guess…I miss some of the adventure. But I think I'm a little smarter than the Original."

He puts his forehead against hers, and they close their eyes, breathing that same warm air.

"Whatever's at the end of the yellow brick road, I'd give up the Emerald City a million times over for you, Dorothy."

Sam laughs, opening her silvered eyes and kissing his nose.

"What would I do without you, Toto?"


	13. Happy Valley

**AN:** I know its nowhere near the right time of year for this, but it was lying around giving me the eye, so I thought, 'why the heck not?' Enjoy, guys.

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**Happy Valley**

Sam was behind the bar pulling espresso shots for Lucy when Jack crept up behind her, wrapped one arm around her shoulders and waggled a slightly fray-leafed red rose in her face.

"'Morning," he murmured, lips against her ear.

Sam grinned, and then squinted at the rose.

It wasn't really red, more a sort of dark, dusky pink. It had a lazy, blousy look about it, its satin petals flapping minutely with every movement – not at all like the tightly furled, classically crisp petalled flowers found in florists. Come to think of it, did the Island even have a florist?

And hadn't she seen this very same rose in Shan's garden this morning?

Sam turned in Jack's arms and gave him the Look.

"Happy Valentines?" he said sheepishly.

She rolled her eyes and kissed the tip of his nose.

"You're hopeless," she told him.

Brightening and reassured of his place in the World as Chief Cook and Foot Warmer, he grinned back at her, arms going around her waist.

"Yeah, but in a discerning, manly fashion."

Sam reflected this was the most romantic two people could get standing at a coffee machine at nine on a Thursday morning.


	14. Wet Sand

AN: Its that time of year down here...

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**Wet Sand**

Autumn is perfect for beach walks. The sun sets earlier these days, and Jack can feel echoes, vague, vague echoes of Colorado here. Not in the salty air or wet sand beneath his feet…but in the cooling evenings, the colours the aged sunlight turns the sky, the turning leaves as fall sets in (though no one calls it that here).

Ahead, Shan strolls through the surf, unconcerned and bare legged to the knee, watching as Hellie toddles before her. The little girl looks faintly ridiculous in her big wooly jacket and bare feet. Jack smiles.

Beside him, Homer, the big slob, is lolloping along as though he's doing them all a great favour by coming out for a walk with them. He ruins the image by pausing to wheeze every so often. He had been given to them merely middle aged, but somewhere along the line had become fat and middle aged. Jack strongly suspected both Sam and Hellie of slipping him tidbits.

Speaking of the Sam…

He looks to the left. Three meters up the beach she walks parallel to the shell band, a pouch made out of Jack's bandana in one hand while she holds the other poised at her side. Sharp blue eyes scan back and forward across the sand, a small smile playing on her lips.

As the sun falls, the light with it, it touches the shells, picking out the tiny perfect ones polished by sand and ocean. Brittle, wafer-thin scallop shells gleaming flesh-pink, apricot, pearl and cream. Burnished periwinkles, each a perfect pink, silver and lilac spiral. Green-lipped muscle shells with purple backs and brilliant rainbowed insides.

Each one of these and many others go into the bandana, and every time she finds one, it's a tiny triumph, a gift. Each time Sam collects a shell, Jack collects a smile. Some watchful part of him that he often denies having knows that she never really got time like this as a kid (the first time anyway). Ever-moving military brat that she was, he doubts the number of beaches she got to collect shells on.

With a squeal and a gasp of laughter, Hellie comes tripping back down the beach to get them and Homer goes to meet her with a _hoof-oofing_ bark. Sam crouches low for Hellie and carefully opens the bandana to show her the treasure trove. Sunlight glides in again, picks at the gold of her hair, the warm flush in her cheeks from the crisp air. Jack loves the tang on the breeze suddenly, the wet sand beneath his feet, the icy tide threatening his ankles…he loves the shape of her smile which has always been the thing that's bound his heartstrings.

And yes, he realizes he's become a hopeless romantic in his (young) old age.

But isn't that the best part? After all, autumn is perfect for beach walks…


	15. Fledgling

**AN:** Oh look! A plot! Whoever put _that_ there?

**Fledgling**

"I've been thinking."

Jack looked up from scrubbing the wriggling beagle. "A dangerous pastime –"

Sam thumped his shoulder before he could get into all out Disney Sing-a-Long mode.

"I've been thinking _seriously_, Jack."

He sobered…which lasted exactly three seconds before Homer's tail gave an especially energetic wag and sent a miniature tsunami up Jack's nose. Post-compulsive-sneezing-fit he straightened out his much abused dignity and said, "Thinking about what, Sam?"

She smiled uncertainly. "University."

**---^---**

"You're sure?"

"Well, not really…"

"But you want to?"

She gave him an earnest, wide-eyed look. Whispered, "Yeah. I mean, I love working at the BC, and honestly, that's kind of amazing to me, but…but I need to…"

"You need to be you."

How did he always get it right?

A sigh. "Yeah. I mean its not even physics, y'know? It's just…the need to _do_ something, to pull something apart and see how it goes together, to make it work _better_, to _build_ something. I want…I want that sense of accomplishment back."

He watched her for a moment. Careful, assessing. She realized he wasn't just going to back her up, he was going to be…well, he was going to be _Jack_ about it. He'd be there, encouraging and cautioning in equal measures, the hand that stayed and steadied in one motion.

The sense of relief was quick and warm.

"There's the practical side to consider, Sam. I mean, we don't earn much; enough to get by, but its café work…"

"I know." And she did, she'd thought about this, and talked to some of the part-timers who went to school on the mainland. "Student loans are interest free here, and there's a program for repayments once you hit a certain pay bracket. I can get a student pass for the ferries and buses. I can study part time, and still do half weeks at BC…"

Jack grinned out right at her. "Part time, really?" There was that look in his eye.

She thumped him again. "You're teasing me," she groused.

"Yeaaaah, just a little." He snorted. "But come on, Sam, this is _you_ we're talking about here. When have you ever done anything part time?"

She felt herself blush, even as she rolled her eyes at him.

"What would you study?" There was honest curiosity in his voice, and she paused to really think about the question. This was part of why she'd wanted to talk to him about it. Not just because he was her quintessential other half these days, but because she was struggling with that particular quandary herself.

What would she study? Not astrophysics again. Even here, across the world, it was still too dangerous; the field itself narrow enough that anyone as young and bright as she inevitably was would get noticed…and if she got noticed…

Besides, she couldn't shake the feeling that she had run that course. That had been the other life, the one she had memories of, but hadn't actually lived. It was a source of secret smiles and reminiscence and vague in-jokes that made Shan and their work mates give them raised eyebrows and second glances, but it wasn't who they were now. It wasn't who they were becoming.

Sam sighed and let her head drop onto Jack's shoulder. His arm went around her automatically, and the simple fact of that made her smile.

"I don't know," she murmured. "I'm not sure yet. But when I am…"

He gave her a squeeze and kissed her hair.

"When you are," he agreed.


End file.
